by Martha Wells
I have code for freezing cameras and deleting myself from them that I’ve used under much more difficult circumstances, and I altered it to work with the station’s proprietary security system. Though really, the biggest danger was a human spotting me from down the terminal and thinking, Hey, who’s that? Fortunately the station was mostly dark.
I trailed Wilken and Gerth to the end of the embarkation hall and up the ramp toward what the schematic said was the Port Authority/Cargo Control offices.
As I passed the lock junction at the top of the ramp something bright and colorful popped up right in front of me and I nearly screamed. It was an ad for a cargo service, created by marker paint on the floor that reacted to movement. It threw a little video into the feed, too, just in case you somehow missed the glowing thing in your face. Usually these markers are only used for emergency procedures because they work even if the power is down. I had never seen them used for ads before. The whole point of markers was that they were the only thing visible in a power outage so it would be easy to see them. It was hard enough trying to get stupid humans to follow the markers to safety without ads popping up obscuring the emergency route—
I reminded myself it wasn’t my job to get humans to safety anymore.
I still hated the marker ads.
I checked the cameras again and saw Wilken and Gerth had found signs of life in the Port Authority area. They stood outside an office center with three levels of bubble windows looking out over what should be the station mall. It was an open plaza area with a couple of tube transports arcing overhead, and a big globular display that was currently on standby hovering in the air. It was surrounded by multi-levels of dark shadowy occupation blocks and empty fronts for places that should be cafés, hotels, cargo brokers, transit offices, tech shops, and so on. Much of it looked unfinished, like no one had ever moved in, and the rest had closed, nothing left behind but a few stray floating display surfaces.
I turned into a corridor that would have led away from the Port Authority district into the main habitation block, if there had been one. I walked in the near-darkness until I found an empty cubby prepared for something that had never been installed, and crouched down inside it. I could monitor the cameras now without worrying about any random station personnel spotting me. A maintenance/weapons scanner drone brushed my feed, and I grabbed it and got control. It was on a desultory patrol outside the PA offices and I used it to give me better views and audio than the static security camera.
Wilken and Gerth were talking to two new humans. There was also a human-form bot standing nearby. I hadn’t seen one in a while in person, just on the entertainment feed. They aren’t popular in corporation territory, because there’s not a lot of things they can do that task-specific bots can’t do better, and with the feed available their data storage and processing ability isn’t that exciting. Unlike constructs, they don’t have any cloned human tissue, so they’re just a bare metal bot-body that can pick up heavy things, except not as well as a hauler bot or any other kind of cargo lifter.
In some entertainment media I had seen, they were used to portray the evil rogue SecUnits who menaced the main characters. Not that I was annoyed by that or anything. It was actually good, because then humans who had never worked with SecUnits expected us to look like human-form bots, and not what we actually looked like. I wasn’t annoyed at all. Not one bit.
I had to run back the drone’s camera feed to catch up, I had been so busy conquering that burst of non-annoyance. The first new human said, “I’m Don Abene.” She gestured to the other new human. “This is my colleague Hirune, and our assistant Miki.” She hesitated. “Did the employment agent have time to brief you?”
“They said it was a bodyguard job.” Wilken flicked a glance at the bot, which was apparently called Miki. It stood there with its head cocked, staring at her with big globe-like eyes. It was unusual for a human to introduce a bot, and that’s putting it mildly. Gerth looked like she was struggling to keep her expression professionally blank. Wilken continued, “You’re going down to the terraforming facility to make an initial assessment and your contract with GoodNightLander Independent requires a security team.”
Abene nodded. “I’m hoping we won’t actually need you. But the company that abandoned the facility didn’t maintain the satellite monitoring, and no one has been inside since they left. We assume it’s deserted, but there’s no way to make sure.”
“The agent said that was a potential problem,” Gerth said. “The terraforming shield is preventing any off-site scanning?”
Hirune answered, “Yes. We know it’s stable, because of the tractor array GI put into place, but that’s all. The station’s been monitoring the facility, but as you can see, there are no patrol vessels here.”
She meant there was a possibility that raiders had moved into the facility. Except if they did that, they couldn’t have been very good raiders, because they had ignored this station. Also, raiders tend to hit and run, and not hang around to live on a deteriorating terraforming facility.
Actually, with my experience in security, anybody who wanted to hang around and live on a deteriorating terraforming facility worried me a lot more than raiders.
Gerth and Wilken exchanged a look. Maybe the same thought had occurred to them. Wilken asked, “Is there a possibility there were active organisms in the facility when it was abandoned?”
“The biological matrices would have been sealed, and probably destroyed, before the staff left,” Hirune said. She made a gesture, like flicking something away. “Even if they hadn’t, there’s very little chance that they could create any dangerous airborne contamination.”
Wilken’s expression remained professionally cool, but she persisted, “I meant something other than bacteria. Any organisms large enough to be a physical danger?”
Right, so even I knew more about terraforming than these two.
Hirune’s face now had the blank, lip-biting expression I associated with humans trying not to show their feelings, especially the feeling that someone had said something unintentionally hilarious. (This is why it had been a struggle for me to give up armor; concealing facial expressions was hard, even for humans.)
Don Abene’s eyes crinkled, but she made it seem more like she and Wilken were sharing a joke. “The matrix wouldn’t be working with any organisms larger than bacteria. And there wouldn’t really be any reason to bring any larger organisms up from the surface to the facility. Of course, we don’t know that they didn’t. So it’s proper to exercise caution.”
Wilken seemed to accept that, or at least didn’t ask any more questions. It sort of made sense. It was a security consultant’s job to be skeptical of their clients’ assurances that everything was fine. (SecUnit clients, at least, only assured each other that everything was fine while you stared at the wall and waited for everything to go horribly wrong.)
Abene and Hirune walked the security consultants into the Port Authority now, where they had quarters with the skeleton station team. They were talking about a full briefing, team prep, and a departure time sixteen hours from now. Miki the human-form bot followed, then stopped. It turned, and looked up at the drone I was riding. Its head cocked and I could tell it was focusing in on the camera.
I let the drone go, its memory of the temporary takeover blanked. It sent a confused reorientation request to the PA’s system, then wandered off back to its patrol route.
Miki didn’t move, still staring into the dark with the opaque surface of its eyes. The feed was clear, it couldn’t know I was here.
Then Miki sent a directionless ping. Just a call into the dark, checking to see if there was anyone out there who wanted to reply.
I checked myself for signal leakage, tightened my walls, and reminded myself to be careful. Just because the station feed was silent didn’t mean no one was listening. The GI expedition would be running their feed off the systems equipment they brought with them, but someone on the station staff was giving the lifter bots
orders and maybe still checking the security reports.
This place was so quiet, maybe Miki had picked up the marker ad I’d tripped. Maybe it had heard a whisper in the otherwise empty feed, and that was creepy enough it even bothered me. Finally, it turned and followed its owner into the PA complex.
I slipped out of the cubby and went down the dark hall to find a better hiding place.
* * *
I worked my way around through the maintenance passages and loading corridors, into an empty commercial slot not far from the Port Authority. After some careful work, I managed to get a view from the two security cameras inside the PA offices. Yes, two. It was weird to be around humans who didn’t monitor everything everybody did constantly via Sec- or HubSystems or drones, and who relied on human supervisors. And one camera was in the central hub for the port traffic control and the other in a jury-rigged hub that was now acting as station control—the two places where if something went wrong, you needed to know right away; in other words, not the mess, restrooms, or private quarters. It was almost like nobody here cared what anybody said or did as long as they weren’t trying to blow up the station or crash the lifter-bots. (After thousands of hours spent analyzing and deleting video of humans eating, having sex, performing hygiene, and eliminating excess bodily fluids, it was a relief, but still.)
Fortunately the GI expedition and the station staff seemed to be pretty casual with each other and I was able to catch enough conversation to hear that the first assessment would be a short one, just twelve hours on the facility for an initial estimate of its condition, then they would return to the station to analyze their findings, take a rest period, then head back. That sounded perfect. Twelve hours should be plenty of time for me to find what I needed.
I also heard what docking slot their ship was leaving from and when they were loading supplies aboard. I still needed help getting onto the expedition ship. But with none to few active systems to work through, I didn’t have much choice.
I was going to have to make friends with the stupid pet robot.
* * *
Hi, Miki.
It answered immediately, Hi! Who are you?
I was using the address in the ping Miki had sent to establish a secure connection. Abene and the others had finished their prep and were taking a rest period before leaving for the terraforming facility. It gave me about three hours to seduce the robot. I didn’t expect it to take that long.
I said, I’m a security consultant. GoodNightLander Independent contracted with my security company to make sure your team completes their mission safely. It tried to message Abene over the feed, and I blocked it. You can’t tell anyone I’m here. I expected it to ask me how I had managed to take over its feed, how I had gotten onto the station. I thought I’d managed to anticipate most of the questions and had my answers ready.
It said, But why not? I tell Don Abene everything. She’s my friend.
When I’d called it a pet robot, I honestly thought I was exaggerating. This was going to be even more annoying than I had anticipated, and I had anticipated a pretty high level of annoyance, maybe as high as 85 percent. Now I was looking at 90 percent, possibly 95 percent.
I managed to keep my reaction out of the feed. It wasn’t easy. I said, This has to be a secret, to keep Don Abene and the others safe. We can’t risk anyone finding out about it.
Okay, it said. I wasn’t sure if it was serious. It couldn’t be this easy. Maybe it was just going along until it had a chance to report me? But it said, Promise me Don Abene and all my friends will be safe.
I had the horrible feeling it was serious. I hadn’t expected a bot on ART’s level, but holy shit. Had the humans actually coded it to be childlike, or petlike, I guess? Or had its code developed that way on its own, responding to the way they treated it?
I hesitated, because while I would rather not see a group of humans killed (again), I wasn’t their SecUnit, or even their pretend augmented human security consultant. It’s hard to keep humans safe when you can’t let them see you. But it was waiting, and I wanted it to trust me, and I said, I promise.
Okay. What’s your name?
This caught me off guard. Bots don’t have names, SecUnits don’t have names. (I’d given myself a name, but it was private.) I used the name I’d given Ayres and the others, my poor dumb humans who had sold themselves to a company and by now probably understood just how bad a deal it was. Rin. Security Consultant Rin.
That’s not your real name. I could tell through the feed it was genuinely confused. It doesn’t sound like you.
Obviously Miki was getting more through the feed than I had assumed. That was all I needed. I had nothing prepared for this, and there sure as hell wasn’t anything in my buffer that was remotely helpful. I defaulted to honesty (I know, I was surprised, too) and said, Rin is what I want to be called. I don’t tell anyone my real name.
Okay. I understand, Rin. I won’t tell anyone that you’re here. I will be your friend and help Don Abene and our team.
Right. (I almost said, Okay.) I couldn’t tell if that was a default answer or Miki was making me a solemn promise. Whatever, either it told the humans about me or it didn’t, and if I was going to do this I had to assume it wouldn’t. Can you give me system access to your shuttle? I want to make sure it’s safe.
Okay. And the data came through the feed.
What they were calling a shuttle was actually a local space exploration/transit vehicle, with two levels of crew habitation areas plus a cargo hold that had been converted to bio lab space. It didn’t have the drive to get through the wormhole, but it could go anyplace else around the system. No bot pilot, just the kind of minimal automatic pilot system that I was more used to seeing on atmospheric craft. Not that helpful if everyone capable of operating the ship’s higher-level functions were injured or incapacitated. On the other hand, you couldn’t deliver killware if there was no bot pilot to kill.
The shuttle had no independent SecSystem, either. I had seen on some media from outside the Corporation Rim that internal security was less of an issue there, that the focus was on potential external threats more than it was on policing your own people. I hadn’t thought it was true, but it did mesh in with the lack of interest in monitoring the station staff in their private quarters. Also with the way my PreservationAux clients had behaved. It made me wonder what Preservation might be like, but I squelched that thought. It was probably a boring place where everybody would stare at SecUnits, just like everywhere else.
Miki was giving me full access, so I took a little tour via its memory of previous trips. It was a nice shuttle, way nicer than anything the company would have provided; even the upholstery was clean and repaired. It was another sign of GI’s commitment to their reclamation project; it would have come here in a big transport’s belly cargo module, or in tow via a dedicated supply hauler like Ship.
I would need to ride Miki’s internal feed the way ART had ridden mine, though unlike ART I couldn’t do it over the distance between a station and a planet. The good part was that there were plenty of places to hide onboard the shuttle, even without packing myself in a cabinet. The bad part was that I would have no systems to see through, no eyes and ears except for Miki.
Yeah, I was thrilled.
Miki, I’m going to need to use your systems to monitor your— I almost said clients. It took almost a full second for me to be able to use the word Miki wanted to hear. —your friends. I need you to be my camera, and let me use your scanning ability. Sometimes I might need to speak through you, pretending to be you, to warn Don Abene and your friends about things I believe are dangerous. Can you let me do that?
Obviously, with the access Miki had given me already, I could have taken Miki over, done what I wanted, and excised it all from its memory. I had done it to Ship, but Ship was a low-level bot and didn’t have enough self-awareness to give a shit. Doing that to Miki … But I didn’t know what I would do if it said no.
Miki said, Okay, I will do
that, Consultant Rin. That sounds scary, but I want to make sure no one hurts my friends.
This felt way too easy. I almost suspected a trap. Or … Miki, have you been directed to reply to every query with a yes?
No, Consultant Rin, Miki said, and added, amusement sigil 376 = smile.
Or Miki was a bot who had never been abused or lied to or treated with anything but indulgent kindness. It really thought its humans were its friends, because that’s how they treated it.
I signaled Miki I would be withdrawing for one minute. I needed to have an emotion in private.
Chapter Three
I USED THE STATION’S hauler-bot delivery passage to get through the derelict mall and back down to the embarkation zone. The shuttle was docked in the Port Authority area and fortunately there was a working security camera. I was able to get a view of the area and see when it was clear. From Miki’s feed I knew that two crew members were up on the control deck running a pre-flight check and the others were still in their station lab space doing their last check list.
I froze the camera’s feed just long enough to sprint across the shadowy embarkation zone and reach the lock. I submitted the entry code Miki had supplied. The lock cycled open, letting out a breath of recycled air that my scan said was much cleaner than what was on the station. It sure smelled better. I stepped inside, closed the lock, and deleted my entry from the log.
I was listening in on Miki’s feed connection with the human assessment team. I heard Kader, one of the two augmented human pilots up on the shuttle’s flight deck, say, Hirune, is that you?
Hirune replied, What? I’m still in the PA. We’re about to come down.
Oddness, I thought I heard the hatch open.
An entry’s not in the log, the other pilot, Vibol, added. I think your ears are confused.
Now I have to check it out to prove you wrong, Kader told her.